86Thousand400: Seneca, Philosophy

Philosophy calls for simple living, not for doing penance, and the simple way of life need not be a crude one. The standard which I accept is this: one's life should be a compromise between the ideal and the popular

People should admire our way of life but at the same time they should find it understandable. Anyone entering our homes should admire us rather than our furnishings. It is a great man that can treat his earthenware as if it was silver, and a man who treats is silver as if it were earthenware is no less great. Finding wealth an intolerable burden is the mark of an unstable mind

Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one: men learn as they teach. And there is no reason why any pride in advertising your talents abroad should lure you forward into the public eye, inducing you to give readings of your works or deliver lecture

One tree by itself never calls for admiration when the whole forest rises to the same height

How much longer are you going to serve under others' orders? Assume authority yourself and utter something that may be handed down to posterity. Produce something from your own resources. This is why I look on people like this as a spiritless lot -the people who are forever acting as interpreters and never as creators, always lurking in someone else's shadow. They never venture to do for themselves the things they have spent such a long time learning. They exercise their memories on things that are not their own. It is one thing, however to remember, another to know. To remember is to safeguard something entrusted to your memory, whereas to know, by contrast, is actually to make each item your own, and not to be dependent on some original and be constantly looking to see what the master said

How much longer are you going to be a pupil? From now on do some teaching as well. Why, after all, should I listen to what I can read myself? 'The living voice', it should be answered, 'counts for a great deal'. Not when it is just acting in a kind of secretarial capacity, making itself an instrument for what others have to say. But no new findings will ever be made if we rest content with the findings of the past. Besides, a man who follows someone not only does not find anything, he is not even looking. 'But surely you are going to walk in your predecessors' footsteps?' Yes indeed, I shall use the old road, but if I find a shorter and easier one I shall open it up. The men who pioneered the old routes are leaders, not our masters. Truth lies open to everyone. There has yet to be a monopoly of truth and there is plenty of it left for future generations too

A setback has often cleared the way for greater prosperity. Many things have fallen only to rise to more exalted heights.

In the ashes all men are levelled. We're born unequal we die equal. When it comes to all we're required to go through, we're equals. No one is more vulnerable than the next man, and no one can be more sure of his surviving to the morrow.